Ukraine War! What Is It Good For? Propaganda

Iain Davis

Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine has been presented to us, in the West, as unprovoked and unjustified.

We have not been told about Russia’s legitimate security concerns in the face of NATO expansionism. Nor has Ukraine’s significant Nazi problem been honestly reported, with some Western propagandist even promoting them.

The Russian government claims that its recognition and defence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) are born from “compassion” for the people who have been under siege for eight years. However, Russia also needs the new republics as satellite states, providing a foothold for its own national security as it opposes NATO’s advance.

It should be noted that Russia’s military actions, in trying to oust Nazis from their strongholds in Mariupol, Kharkiv and elsewhere, has led to the near destruction of many cities and towns in Eastern Ukraine. As of the 19th March the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCR) estimate that 847 civilians were killed in three weeks, primarily as a result of shelling.

The OHCR noted that the “actual figures are considerably higher” but could not be verified. Credible eye witness reports and video evidence indicate that the Nazis in Mariupol and other besieged areas had stopped civilians leaving through humanitarian corridors opened by Russia. There are many reports of Nazi (Asov) atrocities, including the murder of fleeing civilians.

NATO has courted Ukraine as a future alliance member for decades, taking firm steps to admit Ukraine along the way. This has never been acceptable to Russia, whose national security concerns have been consistently ignored.

Only days prior to the Russian attack, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference threatening Russia, not only with a nuclear-armed Ukraine, but a NATO nuclear power on Russia’s south-western border.

Ukraine is a pinch-point for Russia’s natural gas trade with the European Union. The purpose of the Nord Stream pipelines, constructed in partnership with Germany, was to circumnavigate that problem. It raised the potential for greater EU independence from the US and, with an EU commitment to defence union, presented a possible threat to the US dominance of NATO.

Consequently, the US applied unrelenting pressure on the EU, including enforcing sanctions on German companies, to halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. In response to Russia’s official recognition of the DPR & LPR, German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz immediately announced that Germany would not certify Nord Stream 2 for operational use. Russia began it’s military operation in Ukraine three days later.

Please read Parts 1-3 of this series for an exploration of the evidence informing this analysis. This provides us with what we might call the “official-unofficial” explanation for Russia’s aggression. It is an appraisal founded upon the established, accepted concept of international relations.

However, any such investigation is necessarily incomplete. It fails even to describe the globalist forces that are both ripping Ukraine apart and propelling Russia to act. We will explore these in Parts 5 – 6.

Before we do it is important to appreciate just how far we, as supposed democratic societies, have strayed from democratic ideals. This can be understood if we consider the extreme propaganda and censorship our governments are using, hobbling our ability to discern reality.

The Propaganda Environment

There is little chance that the issues we have already discussed will receive fair coverage in the Western mainstream media (MSM) and none at all that it will cover what we are about to consider. The West’s propaganda, in a rapidly evolving conflict, has at times been absurd.

Immediately following the launch of Russia’s military operation the Western MSM reported the unbelievable bravery of the Ukrainian border guards defending Snake Island in the Black Sea. They stated that 13 died in their valiant defence against a Russian “air and sea bombardment.”

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said he would award the guards posthumous medals for gallantry. It soon emerged that this was a fabrication. None of them died and Russia took the Island without harming anyone.

The MSM reported that Russian forces deliberately targeted a Mosque in Mariupol where civilian woman and children were said to be sheltering. The Turkish media later revealed that the Mosque had not been struck by anything.

The BBC were among a wide number of Western MSM outlets that reported an alleged Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol. This apparent outrage, deliberately targeting pregnant women and their babies, led the BBC to report the comments of the Deputy Mayor who said:

We don’t understand how it’s possible in modern life to bomb a children’s hospital. People cannot believe that it’s true.

Indeed not, because there is considerable evidence to suggest it isn’t. When the claimed airstrike occurred the Russian state officials engaged in some ham-fisted disinformation themselves, alleging that the whole thing was staged using “crisis actors.” They also noted that the hospital had been occupied by the Ukrainian forces, thus presumably making it a military target and undermining their own propaganda.

A subsequent account from the most famous eyewitness, Mariana Vishegirskaya, who Associated Press (AP) publicised as the face of the alleged Russian war-crime, paints a very different picture.

There were certainly explosions but no evidence of an airstrike, as no one heard or saw any planes. The hospital had been occupied by the Asov regiment three days earlier. Tellingly, Mariana stated that the Asov Nazis wouldn’t allow people to leave the city through the humanitarian corridors agreed by Russia.

There have been widespread Western reports of destruction of Mariupol and other cities by Russian forces. However, civilian witness testimony from Mariupol notes that Ukrainian forces also shelled Mariupol, causing much of the destruction. Mariupol civilians reported that Ukrainian forces placed their defences in civilian areas, occupied their homes and other municipal locations including kindergartens, hospitals and office buildings, and even blew up buildings with tanks.

Even the Western MSM acknowledged that the Ukrainian military (including the Nazis) were effectively using the civilian population as a human shields by placing their assets in civilian areas. The Washington Post noted:

Increasingly, Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: [. . .] Virtually every neighbourhood in most cities has become militarized, some more than others, making them potential targets for Russian forces trying to take out Ukrainian defenses.

French Military – Map 27th of March 2022

Analysis by French military observers clearly showed that Russia had secured significant military control in eastern and north-eastern Ukraine. On March 29th 2022, during ongoing peace talks between the Russian and Ukrainian authorities in Turkey, Russia announced that it would withdraw its forces from around Kyiv as a sign of “good faith.”

A few days later video evidence emerged from town of Bucha, lying west of Kyiv, appearing to show the aftermath of a Russian war-crime. The horrific footage showed apparent carnage in the body strewn streets of Bucha. The Ukrainian government blamed this butchery on the retreating Russian forces. The Western MSM immediately reported everything that they were told, accusing Russia of the Bucha massacre.

There were some suspicious anomalies in the footage that required explanation. An unusually high percentage of the bodies were lying face down, ruling out identification, and there was an inexplicable lack of blood or other signs of obvious injury on the corpses. Most of the corpses appeared with hands bound behind their backs and many were wearing the white arm bands which Russia gave to civilians in order for them not to be confused with combatants.

In one of the four main videos, unquestioningly accepted as evidence of the Russian atrocity, an alleged corpse appears to get to its feet, observed in the wing mirror of one of the filming vehicles. It is possible that mirror distortion accounts for this. However, these unexplained inconsistencies weren’t the primary reason to doubt the Western MSM’s account.

The Mayor of Bucha gave a video interview which aired on April 1st where he appeared happy, praising the Ukrainian forces for the liberation of the town. He noted that the Russian forces had vacated Bucha prior to March 31st. As of the 31st there were no Russian troops left in Bucha. The Mayor said:

March 31st will go down in the history of our settlement, the entire territorial community as a day of liberation from the Russian orcs [. . .] a great victory in the Kyiv region.

Reporting his statement, the local media claimed that Russian forces had left unexploded mines in a local factory. Neither the Mayor nor the local news reports said anything about a massacre. Two days later Reuters reported the same mayor, Anatoly Fidoruk, this time alleging that Russia had engaged in the mass slaughter of civilians. Something he was either unaware of or forgot to mention two days earlier.

This unfathomable oversight by the entire population of Bucha, none of whom posted anything on social media even hinting at the supposed mass slaughter during the Russian occupation, casts significant doubt upon the story presented by the Western MSM. The “Bucha-Live” Telegram channel didn’t mention the massacre until the story broke internationally.

Initially, it was reported across the West that 400 bodies were scattered throughout the streets and basements of Bucha. We know that Russian forces completed their withdrawal on the 30th of March. Yet the Western reports of the killing spree didn’t emerge for a further four days.

Following the agreed Russian exit, on the 31st of March it was reported in Ukraine that the first Ukrainian forces to enter Bucha were Ukrainian special forces (the SAFARIS.) They posted a video of their operation on the 1st of April. One body was observed in the video, no executions sites or any evidence of mass killings were filmed.

These “specialist units” were said to be tasked with clearing Bucha of “saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces.” Again there was no mention of any massacre in the further reports published on the 2nd of April.

On the same day, the 2nd of April, the New York Times reported:

Ukrainian soldiers from the Azov battalion walked through the remnants of a Russian military convoy in the recently liberated town of Bucha. [. . .] For the past five weeks, photographers with The New York Times and other news organizations throughout Ukraine have chronicled the invasion.

Yet none of these reporters or photographers “chronicled” the Bucha massacre that allegedly occurred at least three days before they arrived in the town. The New York Times (NYT) then tried to double-down on their incomprehensible failure to spot the biggest story in the World, by changing it.

They published purported US satelite images that allegedly pinpointed the position of the bodies. The NYT claimed they had lain there for more than three weeks.

It seems extremely unlikely that this story is true. The bodies had supposedly been lying in the streets, undisturbed for three weeks, and yet there was no sign of decomposition.

The NYT article implied that neither human nor animal activity had disturbed the location of a single body for the best part of a month. It also required readers to believe that US officials and military personnel knowingly ignored an alleged Russian massacre, without saying a word, not just for 4 days but for weeks.

Regardless of which version of the story people may choose to believe, there is another incongruous aspect. The Russian military, having committed a war-crime either four days or more than three weeks earlier, left the scene without trying to hide any of the evidence. If the NYT’s second version of events is to be believed, they also exposed their own troops to the severe risk of disease for practically the entire duration of their occupation of Bucha.

While there is no evidence that the Asov Nazis staged the alleged bloodbath, circumstantial evidence suggests that possibility. It is notable that no one reported the massacre prior to their arrival in Bucha.

On the 3rd April the world was suddenly regaled with fresh tales of Russian barbarity. It would be good to know what happened to the suspected “saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces” that were “cleared” from Bucha by SAFARI and Asov troops.

Russian military actions have included heavy bombardment of cities like Mariupol and Kharkiv. There is no doubt that they have killed many Ukrainian citizens. However, if we discard the NYT’s rather silly claims, unless Russia commanders lost control of their troops in Bucha, the indiscriminate slaughter of unarmed civilians, following an agreed withdrawal and their identification as non-combatants, makes no sense either from a military or propaganda perspective.

It served only to undermine the peace negotiations. As we will discuss in Part 5, prolonging the conflict is in the US-led NATO alliance’s interests, not Russia’s.

This does not rule out the possibility that Russian troops were responsible, but further investigation is certainly necessary. This appeared to be the position of the Russian government who, having strenuously denied the Bucha allegations, requested an emergency session of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the matter. For some reason, the UK government blocked Russia’s request.

Initially it appeared that the US-led NATO alliance were less eager to discuss the evidence. However, acting as the president nation of the Security Council, the UK’s UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, then announced that the UK would convene a session to discuss Bucha on the 5th. Woodward changed the story yet again. This time 800 people had been murdered.

Prior to examining any of the evidence, and relying solely upon videos provided by the Ukrainians, Woodward stated that the footage was evidence of war-crimes. This had in no way been established. No one knew what they were evidence of. Woodward clearly implicated Russia and predetermined the outcome of the discussions, so there wasn’t really any point in holding them.

This illustrates the problem we have discussed previously. The institutions, mechanisms and rulings that combine to form so-called international law are worthless. There is no justice to be found anywhere within a system that is shaped by nothing but hard-nosed realpolitik. It is just another weapon to be used in a global power struggle. International law, as it stands, is no law at all.

The US Bio-lab Conspiracy Theory

Initially the Western MSM furiously denied Russian reports of US-controlled bio-labs and chemical warfare research facilities discovered in Ukraine. They said that this was part of an elaborate plot by Russia to stage a biological “false-flag” attack, to be blamed on the Kyiv government by Putin.

The presence of the labs was then ostensibly admitted by the US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, in a Senate committee hearing. The 2005 signed treaty between the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, establishing the labs, is a public document. These are, or were, US funded labs conducting secret experiments. The 2005 treaty decrees:

Information marked or designated by the U.S. Department of Defense as “sensitive” should be withheld from public disclosure by the Government of Ukraine.

These labs were managed by the DoD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

Obviously a partnership between a US defence agency and a Ukrainian public health agency appears, on its face, to be an unusual arrangement. The DTRA’s own training material states that they are “a combat support agency.” They add that their role includes:

Developing, testing and fielding [using] offensive and defensive technologies

Other documents have exposed years of U.S. led biological and chemical warfare experiments on Ukrainian soldiers. Yet we are supposed to believe that US and Ukrainian documents, statements confirming the presence of the labs, their funding, their clandestine nature and the objectives of the Pentagon directorate overseeing them, is somehow evidence of Russian “disinformation.”

Perhaps so, but Occam’s Razor would suggest a different conclusion: the Russians have exposed US-funded Ukrainian bio-labs engaged in secret bio-weapons research. If this claim by Russia is true then the US and Ukraine have broken so-called international law. Not that it matters.

As we have already discussed, Nazis control Ukrainian national security infrastructure and, as we will discuss, The US-led NATO alliance have a history of working with Nazis to run false-flag terrorist attacks in Europe.

If the unthinkable happens and there is a biological or chemical weapons attack in Ukraine, which is then automatically blamed upon Russia, all of us should insist upon a thorough investigation before we believe anything we are told about it.

In a fairly typical example of the Western MSM response to this evidence, the UK based Guardian published How ‘Ukrainian bioweapons labs’ myth went from QAnon fringe to Fox News. Alleging the claims were Russian disinformation, or part of “far-right” conspiracy theories, the Guardian opined:

The Russian propaganda machine is so engaged in sowing disinformation [. . .] The conspiracy theory began in seeming obscurity. [. . .] [T]his theory was just a remix of an allegation that Moscow has made for years. [. . .] This disinformation laid the groundwork for the QAnon-linked conspiracy theory about Ukrainian bio-labs.

It may be the case that the evidence substantiating the presence of US funded illegal weapons programs in Ukraine (and elsewhere) is all just the product of Russian disinformation or so-called “conspiracy theory.” However, the only way to find out is to examine that evidence and investigate it further.

The Guardian chose not to report any of the facts we have just discussed. Instead it dismissed all of it as a Russian “propaganda effort.” In an attempt to deal with all of the documents, freely available in the public domain, the Guardian added:

The very core of the story is true: the Department of Defense funds biological research and laboratories in Ukraine. [. . .] Washington insists that it does not fund biological weapons research anywhere.

That was enough for the Guardian to conclude its investigation and claim that the whole story was just Russian nonsense. Sadly, this is the standard of journalism that epitomises the Western “free press.” Simply repeating a denial from the Pentagon is not journalism and nor is failing to honestly report the facts to your readers while covering them up with a slew of unsubstantiated allegations and innuendo.

Certainly China weren’t convinced by the Guardian’s argument. Seemingly taking a more deliberative approach, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said:

[W]e call on relevant sides to ensure the safety of these labs. The US, in particular, as the party that knows the labs the best, should disclose specific information as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and what research has been conducted. [. . .] The US has 336 biological labs in 30 countries under its control. [. . .] What is the true intention of the US? [. . .] [T]he US has kept stonewalling, and even dismissing the international community’s doubts as spreading disinformation. Besides, the US has been standing alone in obstructing the establishment of a Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) verification mechanism and refusing verification of its biological facilities [. . .] This has led to deeper concern of the international community. Once again we urge the US to give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.

The US has declined to engage with the any UN-led BWC verification mechanism.

For example, the US government blocked attempts to establish one in 2001. The US has continued to delay the development of an independent, UN investigative body for more than 20 years.

Rather than allow international inspectors to rule out the existence of the suspected US bio-weapons programme, the US has established its own verification process and has found itself to be in full compliance:

There are processes and controls within the U.S. Executive Branch [. . .] that operate to ensure that plans and programs under those departments’ and agencies’ purview remain consistent with U.S. international obligations. [. . .] All U.S. activities during the reporting period were consistent with the obligations set forth in the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). [. . .] Russian accusations are groundless.

While this public statement is more than enough to convince the “journalists” at the Guardian, it is perhaps understandable that the international community, outside of the US-led NATO alliance, still has its doubts. The US government’s behaviour is suspicious, to say the least.

In an amusing irony, the Guardian stated that the Russian news agency, Tass, was “a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.” It’s true, Tass often is a mouthpiece for the Kremlin, just as the Guardian is often a mouthpiece for the White House, Brussels and Downing Street.

The propaganda in the Western MSM, spread by the likes of the CNN, CBC, the BBC, the Times and the Guardian, is just as thick as anything disseminated by Pravda or the Xinhua News Agency. The key advantage the Western MSM had previously enjoyed, over its Eastern propaganda counterparts, was that western populations were “educated” to believe they had a free and pluralistic media. However, that advantage is diminishing rapidly.

The frankly bizarre attempt by Western leaders, and their MSM propagandists, to turn Russia’s probable exposure of US bio-labs into a suggested Russian plot to justify a false-flag attack, was encapsulated by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Speaking to Sky News on 10th March he said:

The stuff that you’re hearing about chemical weapons, this is straight out of their [Russia’s] playbook.

Johnson’s claim followed a previous statement by UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace who said that he was seeing “elements of the Russian playbook;” Jens Stoltenberg, the General Secretary of NATO, also preceded Johnson’s comment by saying that he too could “foresee the playbook of Russia;” Josep Borrel, the EU’s High Representative (effectively the EU Defence Minister), similarly preempted Johnson by noting that developments in the Ukraine were part of “the Kremlin’s playbook.”

These remarkably similar comments indicate a coordinated, scripted narrative. It could be a coincidence, but there are other reasons why we might suspect that Western politicians are working to a pre-approved script.

The Rapid Response Mechanism & the Trusted News Initiative

The rhetoric about Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, pouring out of the western establishment, is a product of the G7’s (including the EU) Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM). It is designed to ensure that designated hostile state and non-state “actors” face a rapid and unified response. The purpose of the RRM was outlined in the 2018 Charlevoix G7 Summit Communique:

We commit to take concerted action in responding to foreign actors who seek to undermine our democratic societies [. . .] We recognize that such threats, particularly those originating from state actors, are not just threats to G7 nations, but to international peace and security and the rules-based international order.”

Announcing the RRM, the UK Government added:

Hostile state activity will be met with a rapid and unified G7 response. [. . .] The move will also see hostile states publicly ‘called out’ for their egregious behaviour – with coordinated international attribution of cyber and other attacks.

The purpose of the RRM is to defend the current, US-led international rules-based order (IRBO). It has nothing to do with protecting democracy. Quite the opposite, the RRM works to undermine democratic principles.

The RRM is an agreement to respond to global events with a fixed narrative designed to promote the interests of the G7’s unipolar world order. Through the RRM, Western governments attribute blame to state or non-state actors and, where there is insufficient evidence to support their proclamations, they work with their MSM “partners” to produce the necessary propaganda and disinformation.

Commercial media is owned by a small handful of global corporations. For example, a 2021 report from the Media Reform Coalition found that just three companies (News UK, the Daily Mail Group and Reach) owned and controlled 90% of the UK national newspaper and 80% of the online news market.

Similarly, the US media landscape is controlled by just five media corporations. Often local and state news readers, across the US, deliver the same, single script, word for word.

In 2019 The UK’s state broadcaster, the BBC, launched the Trusted News Initiative (TNI). This represented a further consolidation of Western media. The BBC joined AP, AFP, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Reuters, Twitter and The Washington Post to form the TNI.

The TNI demands that readers and audiences trust its members. They say that they are “a unique global partnership” and that their role is to “tackle the harmful spread of disinformation.” The TNI have essentially claimed to be the arbiters of all truth. Were he alive today, George Orwell would almost certainly have called them the “Ministry of Truth.”

The TNI is a partnership between the Western MSM and the social media giants whose aim is to remove free speech and silence dissent. They state:

The partnership focuses on moments of potential jeopardy. [. . .] Partners alert each other to high risk disinformation so that content can be reviewed promptly by platforms, whilst publishers ensure they don’t unwittingly share dangerous falsehoods.

In July 2020, the UK government’s Select Committee for Culture Media and Sport noted:

Resources developed by public service broadcasters such as the Trusted News Initiative show huge potential as a framework in which public and private sector can come together to ensure verified, quality news provision. [. . .] The Government and online harms regulator should use the TNI to ‘join up’ approaches to public media literacy and benefit from shared learning regarding misinformation and disinformation. It should do this in a way that respects the independence from Government.

The TNI has no independence from government. All of its leading members are partner organisations of government.

The BBC are funded by the UK government and receives further money, for its international charity BBC Media Action, directly from the UK, US, Swedish, Canadian, Norwegian, EU governments and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Google, another TNI core member, was a start up funded by the CIA’s venture capital company In-Q-tel and is a UK government precurement partner. Another, Microsoft, proudly announces how it is a “partner with government,” helping them to protect democracy .

Reuters has a long history of working directly with institutions of the state. For example, during the 1960’s and 70’s it was paid to spread anti-Soviet propaganda by the UK government. The Washington Post is owned by Geoff Bazos (Nash Holdings) and his AWS (Amazon Web Services) competency partnership works with governments around the world.

The RRM denies the most essential of all democratic principles, namely questioning government authority. There is no room in the RRM for the foundational democratic conventions of free speech and expression. It is an anti-democratic project and a commitment, by G7 and EU governments, to destroy democracy and establish totalitarian rule.

Totalitarianism can be defined as:

A political system in which those in power have complete control and do not allow people freedom to oppose them.

The RRM and the TNI are totalitarian. Combined with censorship legislation, the existence of this nexus demontrates that the G7 political establishment is pursuing policies of intolerance and despotism. It is opposed to democratic accountability.

The TNI are providing the “verified, quality news provision” that supports Rapid Response Mechanism declarations. When Russia stated that “denazification” was one of the goals of its military operation, the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, called Russia’s claim a “grotesque lie;” US President Joe Biden said, in regard to the same, that “it’s a lie” and Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, again in reference to Russian denazification claims, said “it’s a lie.”

The RRM narrative was set. Russia’s stated concerns were totally groundless and nothing more than an excuse for unprovoked, naked aggression. Therefore, it was the role of the TNI to push this disinformation. This necessitated the whitewashing the Nazis and the downplaying their control of the of Ukraine’s national security.

Among many examples of the TNI doing precisely this, the Financial Times (FT) published Don’t Confuse Patriotism With Naziasm: Ukraine’s Asov Forces Face Scrutiny. The FT claimed that the Azov Regiment were a “diverse” crowd who had gone “mainstream.” Engaging in Holocaust revisionism, the FT added that Stepan Bandera was a “nationalist figure” who had only been “accused” of collaborating with Nazis.

The BBC deployed the baseless argument that Nazi influence was impossible without electoral success. They highlighted that the election of a Jewish President was “proof” that the Ukrainian Nazis had no power. The BBC then wheeled out some “experts” who were willing to claim that the Nazis were an inconsequential minority within the Ukrainian military and that their ideology had been “watered down” by new recruits.

Fellow TNI founding member, the Guardian, produced Is There Any Justification for Putin’s War? They also exploited the Nazis lack of electoral success, in a country that voted for a Jewish President, to deny that they had any real power. The Guardian added commentary suggesting that the Nazis were suffering from a reputation problem and that the OUM and UPA were simply “nationalists” who came to be “seen as aligned with the Nazis.”

In order to “protect democracy,” other founding members of the TNI are seemingly happy to promote Nazis. Meta (formerly Facebook) banned the Azov Regiment from their platform in 2019 because they are Nazis who publicly incite appalling crimes, such as genocide, on social media.

However Meta has now reportedly changed its policy to allow its users to show their support for Nazis. Meta apparently condones calls for violence against Russians, including advocating assassination of Russian officials and promoting the killing of Russian soldiers.

While Google, another TNI founder, have censored leading scientists and doctors for questioning COVID-19 policies, Nazis are welcome to host their propaganda channels on YouTube. The Asov Regiments, who murder Ukrainian citizens and use them as human shields, can post as many videos as they like.

This is not to suggest that lawful content, that does not directly incite a crime, should be censored. It merely illustrates that the founding members of the TNI are hypocrites who have no moral compass. The TNI is a propaganda and surveillance cartel whose role is to sell Rapid Response Mechanism “truth” to Western populations. It is undeserving of anyone’s “trust.”

Rampant Censorship And the End of Representative Democracy

Democracy is the best form of government ever devised. Unfortunately, it is not a system of government any of us are familiar with. The word “democracy” (demokratia) derives from “demos” (people) and “kratos” (power). Literally translated as “people power,” democracy means government by trial by jury.

Instead we have something else called “representative democracy,” which is not democracy at all. Representative democracy is a so-called “democratic system” where the people are permitted, by the state, to select their political leaders once every 4 or 5 years.

In the intervening period this tiny group of “special people” exercise executive power and rule over everyone else. This is called an oligarchy and it is the antithesis of democracy. However, as the vast majority call this oligarchical system “democracy” that is how we shall reference it here.

People in the West have been told to believe in, what they call, democracy and have consequently become attached to the idea. The Western oligarchy supposedly maintains some foundational principles which are, in and of themselves, valuable and worth protecting. These are often referred to as democratic ideals.

Democratic ideals have been shaped over thousands of years by political leaders and philosophers. The British sociologist T. H. Marshall, in his 1949 essay Citizenship and Social Class, described democratic ideals as a functioning system of civil, political and social rights.

Civil rights include the right to individual freedom (liberty), exercised through freedom of speech, of thought and faith, etc; political rights enable all the opportunity to participate in and exercise political power, from standing for election to universal suffrage, and social rights afford every citizen basic economic security (welfare) and opportunities (healthcare, employment and education).

To erode any of these rights is to undermine representative democracy (nominally democracy). Both the Western hegemony and the Eurasian alliance between Russia and China, which we will cover in some depth, lay claim to models of democracy.

Neither practice democracy in any recognisable form. Both operate oligarchical political structures and both rule be force. Neither have any commitment to democratic ideals.

Russia is a representative democracy of sorts, but it is certainly not a democracy. In 2019 the Russian state Duma passed its initial “disrespect” and “fake-news” laws.

This legislation means that Russians could face a large fine or up to 15 days in prison for showing “blatant disrespect” to the Russian state or its leaders. The “fake-news” laws empower the Roskomnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media) to act as Russia’s “Ministry of Truth.”

These anti-democratic censorship laws, information control systems and suppression of Russian’s inalienable rights to free speech and expression, have progressed. The 2020 law, effectively outlawing public dissent against Russia’s draconian COVID-19 measures and, more recently, the 2022 law silencing opposition to Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, are typical examples.

The Russian government’s opposition to free speech, freedom of thought and expression includes the blocking of social media companies and the expulsion of foreign journalists. It’s harsh penalties, of up to 15 years in prison for inconvenient journalists, effectively made it impossible for many foreign new outlets to operate in Russia.

In one of the most stunning examples of rank hypocrisy written in recent years, the NYT wrote that Russia had taken censorship to “new extremes.” Perhaps Russian government disdain for democratic ideals could be considered “extreme,” but it is no more so than the equal disregard exhibited by western governments.

Through the totalitarian RRM and TNI the West operates a propaganda operation unparalleled in human history. While the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea and other tyrannies have maintained overwhelming propaganda campaigns, nothing compares to the scale of the RRM/TNI. It is trans-continental, covers print, broadcast and online media and is led by private corporations, working in collaboration with government, who exercise their control through the Global Public-Private Partnership (G3P).

Censorship in the West is just as severe, if not more so, than anything seen in Russia. In 2021 the US Department of State shut down a number of US-based middle-eastern news outlets.

Emphasising the propaganda strangle hold, in response to this attack upon the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution by the US government, the US so-called free press didn’t even mention the constitutional implications.

In 2017, to be able to continue its broadcasting and online publishing operation in the US, serving a Russian community of around 3 million US citizens, the Russian Media outlet RT was compelled to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). In March 2022 US and Canadian cable providers effectively banned Russian media in their respective countries.

The censorship in Europe, in both the EU and especially in the UK, is even more oppressive. The EU has banned a number of Russian outlets outright. They are also surging ahead with their plans to censor the Internet. The Digital Services Act (DSA) will see the EU work with their social media “partners” to remove whatever Brussels’ bureaucrats identify as “disinformation.”

The most anti-democratic countries among the former western liberal democracies is the UK. It has gone further than any other to create a dictatorship.

Having already passed legislation to give itself unlimited authority to commit any crime, the UK government is pushing through with laws to end the right of protest, it is removing the defence of “in the national interests” from whistleblowers and investigative journalists, and it is planning a new Bill of Rights that will enshrine the authority of the state over and above everything else, including citizen’s inalienable rights.

Like the EU the UK has banned Russian media. Justifying the decision the chief executive of the Ofcom (the UK’s broadcast regulator) Dame Melanie Dawes, said:

Freedom of expression is something we guard fiercely in this country [. . .] [W]e have today found that RT is not fit and proper to hold a licence in the UK. As a result we have revoked RT’s UK broadcasting licence.

Vacuous platitudes from the nobility are meaningless. This becomes even more evident when we consider the UK government’s plan to completely shut down freedom of speech online.

Ofcom has been appointed as the regulator for the UK’s Internet under the imminent Online Safety Act. It is nothing less than a government plan to control our ability to communicate and freely share information and ideas online. The UK state’s equivocation about protecting freedom of speech is a damnable lie.

The Western political establishment has no intention to uphold democratic ideals. Freedom of speech and expression, and the liberty that representative democracy is supposedly based upon, means nothing to the ruling class. It is no longer convenient and now they are simply casting it aside.

Representative democracy is itself a sham, but at least there was some vague promise to uphold democratic ideals. We, in the West, can now put aside any lingering, childish notion that we live in democratic societies.

The Ukrainian government have not only banned all Russian media but also outlawed political parties. Ukraine is no democracy either. The absurd suggestion, propagated by the likes of Ursula Von der Leyen, that the West is defending democracy from autocracy, is pure disinformation. There is no such thing as democracy to be found in any nation-state.

We are seeing a struggle for supremacy between global power blocs in Ukraine. The political structure they each hope to rule is a single, cohesive system of global governance. No matter who wins, it’s implementation is assured, unless we act on a population wide scale to stop it.

Ukraine is the current focal point for this struggle. World War III started in 2001 and 2030 is the first waypoint along the path to full global governance.

The West is exploiting the conflict to deliberately speed up the planned destruction of its own economy, a process that began in earnest with the policy response to the pseudopandemic. The East is seeking to establish itself as the driver for the New World Order.

The globalist forces overseeing this struggle care little for the outcome. What matters is that the war is fought, because it is the conflict itself that will deliver the global governance they desire. It is this global confrontation that we will explore in Part 5.

You can read more of Iain’s work at his blog In This Together or on UK Column or follow him on Twitter. His new book Pseudopandemic, is now available, in both in kindle and paperback, from Amazon and other sellers. Or you can claim a free copy by subscribing to his newsletter.

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